Friday, July 30, 2010

Madurai New Airport Terminal - But not international yet

The newly constructed terminal in Madurai airport will be inaugurated on second week of August and will be ready for use in September 2010. This much needed project would help the development of Madurai and surrounding areas. I don’t know the reason why this terminal as of now would not be operated as an international terminal. The Aviation Minister announced that Madurai might become an international airport in near future provided more airlines and passengers use the airport.

Is it the right decision? When this project was initially announced, the plan was to make Madurai as an international airport. Is passengers traffic significantly reduced later? What made the ministry to reevaluate their decisions? It’s a fact that 40 percentage of the passengers traveling to and from Chennai are from Madurai area. So making Madurai as an International airport is a must thing to do. I don’t agree with the ministry that More Airlines should service Madurai to make this as an international airport. Forgive me I am wrong. Should it be cleared by the ministry to operate Customs and Immigration facilities in the airport and announce this as an international airport, so that Airlines would consider operating more service to Madurai? This is now up to the state government to push for it. Lets hope “Madurai International Airport” dream becomes reality.

Update: Madurai airport is permitted to have customs counter. Steps are undertaken to implement customs counter. The next step would be to acquire the permission to have immigration counter. Once these counters set up, Madurai airport soon will be Madurai International Airport.